


Going One Way

by ninamazing



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: dwliterotica, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-01
Updated: 2007-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 13:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninamazing/pseuds/ninamazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>He was beginning to get the feeling that none of this was real.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Going One Way

**Author's Note:**

> This is my experimental who-knows-how-well-it-worked offering for the dwliterotica June Challenge, for which my prompt was the rune Berkana. danakm betaed this and for that I thank her; but note also that I sent it to her late and so if it sucks it is entirely my fault and not hers. :)

He kicked both legs up as he settled into the temporary couch, and let his feet rest just to the left of the gravitic anomalyser. This was a good setup, he decided; one didn't always need to go bouncing around the TARDIS control panels like an excitable lunatic. Sometimes one needed to lie back on a sofa — like a rather lazy lunatic.

"Do you know," he remarked, dropping his head onto Rose's shoulder, "I don't even remember where we went yesterday."

She poked a finger into his side as both of them collapsed in giggles.

"You took me to the Pleiades, Doctor," she said finally, "don't you remember? We set the — er, the readjuster thingy, so we could —"

"Ah!" he exclaimed, jumping up so he could point right at her. " _Ah._ I remember. We went to the Pleiades! And I reprogrammed the timeline readjuster so we could watch the formation of the galaxy over the span of three hundred million years. _Brilliant!_ "

"Wasn't it?" he added, letting his hand drop, watching Rose anxiously.

She grinned. "Yes," she told him. "It was."

When he reached for her, she knew exactly what to do, and she leapt up as well, placing her hands in his so he could spin her around and around until she couldn't quite remember what they did yesterday, either.

 _The lost girl, so far from home._

"What?"

"What, Doctor?"

"Rose, did you just say something?"

 _The valiant child who will die in battle very soon._

He wasn't in the TARDIS anymore, it seemed — he was on a battlefield. There were aliens everywhere, ten thousand different species, names, races, from all the planets he'd visited, and all of them crowded around him screaming. Ten yards away, she was just _ten yards away_ , but he couldn't get to her; he could see her blonde hair, and he almost caught her eye, but her voice was lost in the din.

"Rose?"

He saw it when she went down. It all happened so fast. The stampeding aliens pressed over her like she'd never been there, covered her up, sealed over that hole in the ground where she'd fallen. The Doctor yelled her name, somehow feeling that this had all happened before, and then it occurred to him to wonder why he was suddenly here, when just a moment ago he'd been on his ship with her. Laughing.

"Doctor?"

 _Doctor, what does it mean?_

"Rose?"

He could almost see her again — or was that someone else? A different human, another alien perhaps, built to look like her? _Where had she gone?_

"Doctor, I didn't say anything."

No. He wasn't on a battlefield.

He was in a wide city street, looking up at the windows of buildings all around him: it was Earth. Flats, shops, dance studios — it was all here, but for some reason he kept looking, scanning across all the windows in his sight over and over again. Searching for something he almost couldn't believe he'd actually find.

He saw her, at last, through one of the windows. She was explaining something to a large crowd. Nobody seemed to be able to really hear her. _No, I haven't been to school in a long time — well, no, I haven't exactly had a job, either, not exactly — look, there's this man —_ and the Doctor tried to shout up to her, but nothing quite seemed to go through.

He was beginning to get the feeling that none of this was real.

 _Rose, don't listen._

"Doctor?"

He grabbed her arms, both of them standing still at the centre of the TARDIS, locked there.

"Doctor, what's going on?"

Time travellers don't get déjà vu. And the Doctor wasn't the sort to have visions or dreams. He stared back into Rose's open eyes, afraid even to blink, waiting for his head to clear.

"Doctor, you okay?"

Rose Tyler. He'd always had a bit of undue fondness where humans were concerned.

"Rose," he said, cupping her cheeks in his hands, "we're going to start something different now, you and I. We're going to … we're going to stop exploring."

"Stop exploring?"

"For a bit. Long as we can."

"Doctor, what's happened?"

He smoothed her hair back, remembering the cupcake with the ball bearings and the sunset on the planet with the dragons, when she told him she'd stay with him forever. He couldn't tell her.

"It's just — the thing about time, Rose, the thing about time is that no matter how much you travel through it, backwards or forwards, you're still really only going one way. That's just how it works."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said, pulling her close for a second and then taking her hands again to spin her around him, slowly, "I mean that we're going to stay in here for now, because we can last in the TARDIS for a bit without anything happening. We can stop. Just for a while."

Rose stepped in and touched his jacket, keeping herself steady.

"You've never stopped, in all the time I've known you," she said softly. He didn't have to tell her, not if he didn't want to.

"I think this'll be the only time," he told her.

They were standing so close now, their heads together — absurdly, Rose remembered what it used to be like with Mickey. The Doctor remembered the Pleiades.

"The only time?" she asked.

The Doctor nodded.

"Best keep dancing, then," she told him.

"Best," he agreed, and smiled.


End file.
